Is More Attention Finally Being Given to Missing Black Girls, Women?

20-year-old Carolyn Janiece Miller (left) was last seen by family on Tuesday, April 9 when she left her Quintana Drive home in the Potomac area. Police said Carolyn was driving her 2019, red Toyota Corolla with Maryland temporary tag: T889737 when she was last seen.The Mississippi Department of Public Safety said Dakota Elliott Kelly (right) was reported missing On Monday, April 15. Dakota is black, 5’2″ tall, weighs 140 pounds, with brown eyes and short, black hair.

By Stacy M. Brown, NNPA Newswire Correspondent@StacyBrownMedia

Minneapolis police have a located a 12-year-old girl who went missing last week.

Dejah McCondichie had last been seen sometime between 5 and 6 p.m. on Saturday, April 13, at her home on the 3200 block of 4th Street North. By Sunday afternoon, the police department posted an update with good news: Dejah had been found and is safe.

Greenville, South Carolina Police who went searching for 2-year-old Asaiah Nelson and her 50-year-old grandmother Michelle Matthews, also reported good news: the pair has been found safe.

In Georgia, police said they’ve safely located 14-year-old Anastasia Foxworth who had been missing for more than 24 hours.

Could this series of good news updates mean that the tide is finally turning for black girls who go missing? “It’s a step in the right direction, when you hear that authorities are finally having success, especially with black girls,” said Yvonne Russ, a clinical psychologist. “But, there’s still too many missing and too many have been missing for too long.”

Organizations like Black and Missing But Not Forgotten, the Black and Missing Foundation (BAM) in Landover Hills, Maryland, and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) in Alexandria, Virginia, have struggled to shed light on the real emergency that is of the nation’s missing.

More than 424,066 girls of all races have gone missing since the beginning of 2018, according to NCMEC. More than half of that total are women and girls of color, according to BAM, which, like NCMEC, rely on statistics from the FBI.

Many said the media hasn’t done enough to shine the spotlight on the crisis of the missing – particularly black girls.

“The majority of these children most likely come from marginalized communities, and are primarily low-income people of color,” said Dr. Ronnie A. Dunn, an interim chief diversity and inclusion officer and associate professor of urban studies at Cleveland State University.

“Given this nation’s racially stratified socioeconomic class hierarchy, as evidenced throughout institutions in America where poor children of color have worst outcomes on all quality of life indicators, their lives are devalued in relation to upper class white youth,” said Dunn, who has authored two books, “Race Profiling: Causes & Consequences,” and “Boycotts, Busing, & Beyond: The History & Implications of School Desegregation in the Urban North.”

“And even within that, while this nation espouses the valuing of children in general, this does not appear to be the reality as evidenced by the failure to act in the face of the onslaught of mass school shootings from Sandy Hook to Stoneman Douglas where the majority of those killed were middle class white youth,” Dunn said.

“Therefore, we see less media attention paid to missing children, particularly those of color,” he said.

Since the beginning of the month, numerous young girls have gone missing.

This week, NOPD announced they’re searching for a 14-year-old girl who was last seen leaving a residence in the eastern part of the area.

14-year-old Juayonna Carruth was last seen leaving an eastern New Orleans residence.

Juayonna Carruth was last seen on Sunday (April 21) in the 4600 block of Sierra Madre Dr.

Carruth was in New Orleans for a home visit.

Carruth asked her sister for a backpack before disappearing from the residence, police said. She is a black female standing about 5-foot tall and weighing about 130 pounds with brown eyes and black hair.

Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of Carruthis asked to contact NOPD Seventh District detectives at 504-658-6070.